“Do you mean to keep it up till he becomes discouraged and divorces you?”
Before she had time to answer, one of her slaves came in.
“The tchelebi [master] is asking if he may see you.”
I rose to leave the room.
“Don’t go,” she begged.
I sat down, a very uncomfortable little person. Nashan crossed her slender hands on her lap and waited. Her eyes were firmly fixed on the floor; her lips compressed, as for eternal silence.
He came in. I do not know why I expected to see a grown-up man, with man’s tyrannical power stamped on his brutal features. What entered was a boy, a timid moustache sprouting on his lip. He was tall and good-looking, but almost paralysed with shyness.
He looked at nothing except his wife, and his face shone with all the love he felt for her, with all the dreams he must have made about this one woman, whom he had never seen till the day of his wedding.
We are apt to think only of the woman’s side, and few of us ever give a thought to what may be the man’s disappointment, the man’s crushed ideals in his marriage. Because he bears it like a man, because he makes the best of what fate has allotted him, often without a word of complaint, we think that the tragedy of marriage is entirely one-sided.
That day, as the young fellow came in, shy and awkward, carrying a small bundle in his hand, prejudiced though I was against him, I somehow felt that there was his side, too. Perhaps it was his extreme youth, his good looks, which touched me; or perhaps it was the expression of misery on his face. Poets and writers have written about the woman’s heart-break, but it is the sorrow of the strong which contains the most pathos.